Antifa Doesn't Exist

Spectator

On September 22, in one of the 209 Executive Orders he’s issued just this year, Donald Trump declared “Antifa” (his capitalization) a “domestic terrorist organization” and ordered that they be investigated, disrupted, and dismantled. We'll discuss how comically inept this was a bit later.

The U.S. did have some domestic terrorist organizations in the late 1960s and early 1970s, or at least something close to that. The confluence of civil rights, women’s rights, and anti-Vietnam war protests gave birth to some sketchy organizations, and some of the protests did involve violence, including bombings. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Weathermen and the Weather Underground were all active and angry. (It should be noted a new, totally non-violent version of the SDS was formed in 2006 and is still active.)

What these groups had in common was they were actually organizations with some sort of structure and leaders. They had offices and a mailing address and chapters in multiple states.

Antifa has no such organizational capability because there is no antifa organization of any kind anywhere. As the name says, the people loosely calling themselves antifa are mostly protesting against what they see as fascism on the rise in the country. They also often stretch their activities to include protests on issues involving the environment, women, people of color, and immigrants.

To be sure, there are people who enjoy these protests so they can dress up in all black, wear masks, throw stuff, and light fires. They sometimes call themselves antifa, but mostly they are anti-everything and just try to foment anarchy.

Trump would like to identify areas “infiltrated” by antifa so he can send in the troops to prove he’s a tough guy. There is, however, no reason to believe local law enforcement cannot adequately deal with the rock throwers and fire starters without needing outside help from either masked feds or weekend warriors from the National Guard.

The president also says he wants to go after those who “fund antifa,” and that number one target is a group called Open Society Foundations, founded and primarily funded by the chief villain and target of the extreme right, George Soros.

Soros, a Hungarian born immigrant whose family escaped the Nazi death camps in WWII, made his fortune with a hedge fund and through currency speculation. He began his philanthropic work in 1984 by providing college scholarships to Black students in apartheid-ravaged South Africa. He founded the Open Society Institute in 1993, changing the name to the Open Society Foundations in 2004.

They currently operate in Africa, Europe, Central Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, the Middle East, Asia-Pacific, and North Africa. Their focus is on social justice, preserving or developing democracy, and the environment. They have a strict non-violence rule. It is not clear if any Soros foundation money has ever reached the people taking to the streets, though the organization might support peaceful demonstrations and activities.

And that’s just the beginning of the problems with Trump’s anti-antifa orders.

There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution or statutes that would allow the president to declare any group a “domestic terrorist organization.” Federal law only allows such a declaration on foreign groups. The courts will have to decide if the president can simply make up another law and then require it be enforced.

Eliminating antifa will be a real challenge since no such group actually exists. It’s what some protesters call themselves, though it’s likely they now wish they hadn’t. In short, there is no antifa organization anywhere. There is no national headquarters, no executives or a boards of directors, no conventions, no president, no state chapters, no mailing address to which the Soros organization can send their money… there is no such organization as antifa. That reality will make it difficult to defund and dismantle.

Antifa is an idea, and not an especially well-defined one. It is not a real organization.

Trump wants to snuff out protests he doesn’t like by claiming they are violent and out of control when they are neither. Portland is a good example. Trump and Kristi Noem, his head of Homeland Security, have both referred to “war ravaged” Portland or called it a “war zone.”

But when Noem went to prove it to herself, flanked by enormous security, the “war zone” was about a dozen peaceful folks including a guy in a chicken suit. The protests got bigger only when the masked ICE agents descended on the city looking to scoop up brown-skinned Spanish speakers.

There is no “war ravaged” American city because there are no wars occurring here and certainly no need for any form of the military to be involved. Protesting is our cherished right, and those engaging violently or destructively should be arrested by local law enforcement, not the military, and prosecuted by local authorities, not the feds.

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